Prompt:Just Hold Me For A While, Please. Requested By Everyones Fave, @nyc-parker

prompt: “Just hold me for a while, please.” requested by everyone’s fave, @nyc-parker

“You look lovely,” he tells her, and she smiles at him warmly, a small thing that barely lifts the corner of her painted red mouth, and he loves the sight of her.

Her mascara is smudged, just the tiniest bit. It’s the kind of thing that you wouldn’t notice if you didn’t spend hours learning the sight of her face in every setting. She’s so pretty, curled hair flattening after hours at some dinner for her job.

She hadn’t had a plus one, and he’d had work to do anyway.

He’d seen her getting ready, hung out with her while got ready. She’s got a certain laser-sharp focus when she does these things, eyes trained on the right color of eyeshadow and how to do the uptick of her eyeliner just perfect, and it’s lovely to watch. (She usually reserved such attention to him.) She had curled her hair and yelled at him for making her laugh because I could burn myself you dick!

She’d stepped into silver heels and he’d looked her up and down like it’s still before he’d had the nerve to tell her looking at her was his favorite thing to do- and she’d looked like the most stunning thing the world’s ever made. She’d had the nerve to ask if she looked okay, tucking a curled lock behind her ear and brows furrowed as if that wasn’t an insane question.

(Sometimes he wonders if she can see.)

And while it was upsetting not to go with her, this is still the best part of the night, anyway. She’s wearing a long purple dress and her heels are off because she can’t stand them anymore. She falls into the space next to him on the couch, leaning into him like she’s made to exist in his sphere. It’s second nature, the way he wraps his arm around her shoulders and how she leans back.

“Thank you,” she replies, and fatigue drips from her honey-sweet voice, and she turns to tuck her face into the crook of his neck, voice muffled as she speaks, “You look lovely too.”

He does not. He is wearing a grey T-shirt that has a coffee stain on the front and old shorts he’s pretty sure he bought in high school, his hair’s a mess because he’s run his hands through it like 8 times, and he’s pretty sure the cold cup of tea and half-eaten slice of pizza doesn’t make him look like some god of attractiveness. She sounded serious though, and that’s the part that still melts him down to the center.

(She drinks in the sight of him the same way he looks at her, and it’s still hard to believe.)

“No comment,” he says back, and it’s worth it for the way she laughs, soft and real while shifting to prop her legs up on their cheap coffee table from goodwill.

She’s wearing the perfume he gave her for their anniversary, and she’s all easy movements and effortless grace, careful and reverent with the way she touches him. He loves her when she laughs, loves her when she smiles and loves her when she fights with him over what show to watch and loves her when she’s not doing anything at all.

Her eyes are fluttering shut, and it’s an easy tell that she’s exhausted. Her favorite show is on, which they don’t watch together often, mostly because of how she fawns over the main character, which leads to him being miffed, not jealous, and she fawns over that.

Now, though, she can’t keep her gaze focused on anything at all. The only indication he has that she’s still awake is that she’s holding him too tightly to be asleep.

“Baby,” he says, and it’s hard not to relish how she preens, just the tiniest bit at the affection. It’s still so new, even after years of loving each other, the way it feels to hear the affection that drips from every affectation. “You wanna head to bed?”

“In a minute,” she replies, picking her head up to meet his gaze. It will invariably not be just a minute. And she’s been sleeping late lately, they should probably go to bed, especially if- “Just hold me for a while, please.”

Please. As if it’s a favor. As if it isn’t the greatest privilege he thinks he will ever have.

She snuggles into him and leans on his shoulder again, and she still makes his heart skip.  Okay.  Okay.

He kisses her temple then leans his head back on hers, legs tangled, the blanket covering her than on him, and he’s happy. Happy she’s warm, happy she’s with him, happy that his favorite thing to do in the world was asked of him. With a please.

“Of course, honey.”

AN ARMY OATH!

If BTS has a million fans, I’m one of them. If BTS has five fans, I’m one of them. If BTS have one fan, that one is me If BTS has no fan that means I’m no longer on earth. If the world is against of BTS then I’m against the world. Until the very end, I’ll support and love BTS

RB to sign the oath 

| by tinejinjaem

8 Ways to Improve Your Writing

I got a great anonymous ask last week from someone who wanted to know how to identify weak spots in their writing. One of the things that comes with time and experience is finding the language to identify, discuss, and address the feeling that something isn’t quite right or that a story is “missing something.” Not knowing them or their writing, of course I couldn’t help them figure out what specifically the problem was. But I did share with them a list of things I’ve done over the years to be able to identify weak spots and improve my writing. 

1. Analyze your favorite writers.

Figure out why you like the writing that you like. Ask yourself: What are they doing here? What are they doing that I’m not doing? Why do I love their writing so much? Take notes on their stories. Plot them. Write in the margins. Read them slowly. Read their reviews—both good and bad. Did that writer you love once write something you hated? Great, even better. Figure out why that particular book was different from the others.

2. Analyze your own writing.

Do you have an older story you wrote that you love? Figure out why. What did you do differently in that story that you’re not doing in the current story you’re writing? Make notes. Draw maps. Reverse engineer everything.

3. Develop a language to talk and think about writing.

Read craft books, blogs, anything you can get your hands on. Learn about point of view, conflict, character development, dialogue, story structure, syntax, metaphors. Get your advice from good sources, and don’t believe everything you read. If something doesn’t sit right with you, throw it out. But be open to everything.

4. Journal and write about your writing.

Over time, you will identify consistent weaknesses that you have. Then, in the future, when you feel like “something is missing” from your writing, you can reference your notes and remember, for example, that you often have difficulty with your protagonist’s motivation, with theme, with dialogue, etc., and you’ll have a better idea about where to go looking.

5. Share your writing with someone you trust, ideally a more experienced writer than you or an editor or mentor.

Be very careful about who you share your writing with. Friends and family are not always the best choice. You don’t want someone who’s just going to throw around their uneducated opinion about your work, who has a big ego, or who won’t be honest with you. Remember: “I liked it” or “I didn’t like it” are useless pieces of feedback. You want someone who can read your work and say, “Your protagonist’s passion for music made them really likeable to me. I was dying to know whether they would get into the conservatory or not!” or “My attention wandered on page two, when you described the couch upholstery for three paragraphs.”

6. Analyze the areas of your writing which are commonly problematic for new writers (and writers in general).

In my experience as an editor, the most likely culprits are unclear character motivation and lack of conflict. There are a lot of good resources (books and blogs) about this. Try a Google search for “most common mistakes beginning writers make.”

7. Trust your intuition.

Do you keep coming back to the same page or scene in your story, feeling like it isn’t right? You’re probably onto something.

8. Take time away from your writing.

You’d be amazed how much more clear everything will be after a break. Give yourself at least a week for a short story, 3-4 weeks for a novel. It could also be the case that your ambitions for this particular story don’t yet match your skills, and that you’ll have to wait even longer to successfully finish it. I’ve known writers who have given up on a story only to come back to it months or years later once they’d gained the skills and insight to complete it. And then suddenly writing that story seemed really easy!

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The Literary Architect is a writing advice blog run by me, Bucket Siler. For more writing help, check out my Free Resource Library or get The Complete Guide to Self-Editing for Fiction Writers. xoxo

credits to @meg.ikarp on Instagram

Hope this works for me 🤞

reblog and make a wish! this was removed from tumbrl due to “violating one or more of Tumblr’s Community Guidelines”, but since my wish came true the first time, I’m putting it back. :)

the power that this single picture holds